


Whiskey Sweet

by MostlyAnon



Series: Details Lost to Legend [1]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alcohol, Banter, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Drinking, Dwarves, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Rain, The Hanged Man - Freeform, Warrior - Freeform, Whiskey - Freeform, killer, killer hawke, lockpicking, rogues - Freeform, warrior hawke- Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:23:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostlyAnon/pseuds/MostlyAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know what they say about dwarves...</p><p>Hawke and Varric debate the skills of warriors, rogues, and dwarves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskey Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Edited and updated. Originally written for the kink meme, inspired by this prompt: 
> 
> _Someone let's the cat out of the bag that apparently Varric is a god in bed. But Hawke is not convinced._
> 
> _F! or M! Hawke. Your choice._
> 
> _Go crazy!_
> 
>  
> 
> I think the only thing I really went crazy with was researching Hawke's armor.

“I don’t believe it.”

Varric’s look was one of carefully constructed hurt, as saccharine as a girl’s fantasy and twice as empty. “Hawke, you wound me.”

“Not unless you wander into my line of attack,” Hawke said, tracing her fingertip around the lip of her beer mug.

“That happened _one_ time,” he said. “And if I recall, you’re the one who boasts she can peel a grape with that anchor of a sword.”

“I do not,” she said, brow furrowed.  
 “You do now.” He grinned. 

She flicked a few drops of ale at him. Outside the Hanged Man, it rained like it would never stop, muffling the usual nighttime sounds of the city. There was little mayhem to be found on the streets, no slavers to stalk, no bandits to beat, no gangs to...

(“Synonym for fight, starting with a ‘g’,” Hawke prompted, chin propped in her hand.

“Grapple?” Varric supplied.

“I am fairly certain I’ve never grappled with a gang,” she said.)

Regardless, there were no gangs to grapple with, were she so inclined. Instead, she found herself sequestered in the Hanged Man, waiting for the storms or her patience to break. Wet armor and wet mabari were two of her least favorite things; they were much worse than sitting around and waiting for the rain to stop. For now.

“As I was saying,” Isabela said, gathering up their cards to shuffle the deck. “It’s practically common knowledge that if you need a tunnel properly plowed, you go to a dwarf. You know what they say...”

“I think you mixed your metaphor, Rivaini,” Varric said.

“With what?” she asked, dealing out the cards. Hawke watched her draw from the bottom, but didn’t comment.

“Bad writing,” he said. He left his hand on the table in favor of tapping his fingertips against the arm of his chair. “Rumors about dwarven prowess in bed are a lot like rumors about treasure in the Deep Roads. Everyone’s heard them and most of them are made up.” He tossed a few coins into the pot.

“Oh, but we made quite a bit of gold from the treasure we found in the Deep Roads,” Merrill said, brow furrowed. She looked at her cards, then at her companions, settling on Varric. “And had to leave much of it behind.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t true, Daisy.” Varric grinned.

Hawke shook her head. “I don’t buy it,” she said, again.

Varric steepled his fingertips, considering her over them. “Killer, you bought a cursed mine, three pink collars for that beast of yours, and ‘invisible’ gloves after we cleared the Deep Roads. You’d buy anything.”

“Not the next round,” she said, tossing in a few coins. “That’s on you.”

Corff eventually shut down the bar, prompting the few remaining patrons to brave the rain in search of more alcohol. Isabela gave them a cheery wave before she left, dragging Fenris and Merrill with her. Corff left Hawke alone, studiously avoiding the table she and Varric shared. 

After the sweeping had been done, (who knew? Hawke had been certain the broom was as much decoration as the washbasin in the back,) and the chairs turned up onto the other tables, Corff fidgeted behind the bar, stealing glances at Hawke. She watched from the corner of her eye, curious as to how long he would continue to do so before he grew the balls to try and throw her out.

Norah finally came out from the back room, swept the scene with a glance and huffed. She stalked over to them. 

“Oy, Varric. Get your human to go home. She’s scaring Corff,” Norah said, taking their mugs to dump them into the basin behind the bar.

“Go on,” Varric said to Hawke. “Shoo.” 

He waved his hands at her, doing a fair impression of the way Leandra used to wave them off when he came round to find Hawke for business. Leandra may have understood the necessity of Hawke’s dealings, but she never cared for the tone of them. She always seemed hopeful that eventually she would be able to gather the unsavory elements of her daughter’s life into a dustpan and dump them onto the street.

Hell of a woman, Leandra. He’d liked her quite a bit.

As she had then, Hawke ignored him, raising an eyebrow at Norah. There was a thin scar through her eyebrow, left there from a wound never properly healed. Varric remembered the detail of it and from there he could trace the broad themes that defined the story-- a rage demon and a dark, gruesome cave, another task that stripped away a small layer of softness from Hawke. The firelight caught on the scar, snagged as the claw had, all those years ago. It cast a decidedly dangerous air to otherwise delicate features.

Varric made a note of it, so he could add it into the story later. 

“Fine then,” Norah said, but she took a hasty step back, bustling to gather up Corff and propel him toward the door. “ _You_ close up. If you can manage to defeat the bloody arishok and save this city, locking a door behind you shouldn’t be a problem. Make sure the dwarf pays his tab, he’s only robbing himself otherwise.”

Hawke held her peace as she watched the waitress and bartender go. Anyone not looking for it wouldn’t have seen the easing within her, after the door swung shut and stayed closed for several minutes. Varric watched her wait for an attack that never came, despite what history and experience had conditioned her to expect. He liked that best about Hawke, her unsettling patience in waiting on a fight. The city was too full of people who didn’t know what the long game was, much less how to play it. She eventually rose from her chair, stretching her arms above her to work out the stiffness in her spine. 

“I think that’s the first time anyone’s asked me to _lock_ a door,” she said, undoing the buckle of her baldric. She laid scabbard and sword on a bench at their table, the massive blade taking up most of the room. Freed from its rigid structure, she stretched again, arching her back and rolling out her shoulders and neck.

“I can show you how, later,” Varric said, as she hopped the bar and rummaged behind it. She held up a bottle of whiskey and looked askance at it. Finding it suitable, she held it up for his approval and he nodded. “I know how much trouble locks give you.”

“Lockpicking’s for rogues and people who don’t understand how flimsy walls are,” Hawke said. She snagged a pair of glasses on her way, settling herself more comfortably back at the table, next to Varric now, instead of opposite him.

“Always the warrior,” Varric chuckled, examining the whiskey again. Finding it to his standards, (that is, it was whiskey and it wasn’t obviously poison,) he poured for them both. “You could use a little finesse in your life, killer.”

“That’s what dwarves are for,” she said. 

“Maker, no,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s what _rogues_ are for. Don’t start mixing your stereotypes like Rivaini’s metaphors. Dwarves, on a whole, are almost as tactless and heavy handed as humans.”

“You don’t say?” Hawke asked, eyebrows raised as she sipped her whiskey. “Color me disillusioned. I’m shocked. I don’t think I’ll recover from this, Varric.”

“Oh, so you’re one of those funny humans,” Varric said. “I didn’t realize that. Now I need to rewrite the entire first act.”

“I’m very charming,” Hawke agreed. “Everyone always says so.”

“Usually while staring at your sword and praying to the Maker you don’t feel the need to draw it,” Varric said.

“Fenris’ sword is larger than mine,” she pointed out.

“And I make just as many compensation jokes about him,” Varric promised, patting her hand.

“I’m perfectly at peace with the size of my cock, thank you,” Hawke said. 

That got him; Varric choked on his whiskey, laughing. “Shit, Hawke, maybe I do have to rewrite that first act,” he said, fishing out a handkerchief.

Hawke’s eyes were warm, creased at the edges with a smile that didn’t play on her lips, her cold visage warmed by his mirth. It was rare that she was the one to make him laugh. 

She propped her cheek on one fist, dipping the fingers of her other hand into the remaining bit of whiskey in her glass and flicking the drops at him. They were surprising delicate things, her hands. Varric considered them as he refilled their glasses-- for all she wore the history of her battles on her skin, her hands were largely unmarked. In another life, hands like hers might have belonged to a lady less violent, one allowed a life of softness and finery.

He picked up her hand and turned it over, studying it for detail without much consideration to the gesture. She allowed it, swapping her glass to the opposite when he held his hand out for her other. The strongly muscled wrists of a master swordswoman, but long, almost delicate fingers and the unblemished skin of the truly skilled. It was rare anything slipped past her guard to scar her. 

In battle, at least.

“Hmm,” he said, after a while, letting her have her hands back. She brushed the pads of her fingertips across his brow in a teasing gesture, her air one of faint tolerance, the acceptance of a friend long familiar with his need to categorize detail and character. “You wouldn’t make a half bad archer,” he said, by way of explanation, “but no one would buy it, your calluses are all wrong.”

That made her think of their earlier conversation. “What do they say?” she asked, considering him through her lashes. More details too fine for this life and her characterization, things he couldn’t put into the official stories. No one would believe a warrior woman with eyelashes like that.

“About calluses? Not much, I imagine, although I hear the quanari are fans.”

Hawke’s lips twitched in amusement. She must have been drunk; it was almost a smile. “I meant, what do they say about dwarves? Isabela never did explain.”

“Ah, that,” Varric said. “You sure you want to go there?”

She arched one imperious eyebrow at him, a look that leveled many a noble guilty of mistaking lack of bravado for lack of power. “Do I often ask questions I don’t want the answers to?”

“Isn’t that one?” he asked, expression bland. “I seem to recall you throwing a chamberpot at Dulci de Launcet when she told you why long swords weren’t appropriate formalwear for dining with Orlesian nobles. You did ask.” 

“That wasn’t why I threw a chamberpot at her,” Hawke said. “I threw a chamberpot at her because I didn’t have a dagger handy.”

“I can’t imagine why people don’t find you more charming,” Varric said. 

“It is a mystery,” she agreed. “...Much like what is said about dwarves.”

“Oh, the usual stuff,” he said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. She mirrored him, glass held between both hands, eyeing him over the lip. Unlike him, she kicked her legs onto the edge of his chair, boots crossed at the ankles. He waved a hand. “You know: endurance of a warhorse, fingers of a master-craftsman, bit on the small side.”

She raised an eyebrow at the last one.

“...Compared to a dragon,” he finished. She snorted a laugh.

“That can’t be the best you can do,” she said. Her calf was warm and comfortable against his thigh, despite the edge of her greave digging into his hip. He shifted her slightly, enough to relieve the pressure of the metal, but left his hand to rest there, fingers tapping absently against her armor.

“Please,” he scoffed. “You didn’t ask what _I’d_ say. You can’t expect much from conventional wisdom.”

“What would _you_ say, then?” she asked.

“About fucking dwarves?”

She nodded, setting her empty glass aside. The whiskey burned inside her, chasing away all but the last vestiges of vigilance and wariness. Varric seemed to consider his answer carefully, as he finished his own drink. There was a calculated edge to his customary faraway look, something that betrayed him as playacting at the rituals ordinarily observed while crafting truly masterful tale. He finally leveled his attention on her.

“Not a hell of a lot,” he said with a shrug. 

Hawke’s laughter was sudden, as sharp as the rest of her, but it made her look younger, like the woman he had first followed, years ago. Time and fate had conspired to transform her, the way heat and pressure could transform coal, with much the same results. Fond as he’d been of the sweet young thing that first crossed his path, bristling and full of spirit like a kitten challenging the rabid mabari that was Kirkwall on a good day, he didn’t much mourn the change. He’d always been a sucker for a dynamic character.

“Varric Tethras, unable to describe the carnal skills common to the dwarven race?” she asked. “That’s a either a terribly sad commentary on your lovers or your talent.”

Varric curled his fingers around her slim ankle, stroking up her leg as he leaned forward, his smile as wicked as Bianca’s song. “Now, now, Hawke, I wasn’t speaking personally to what I’d say about _my_ skills, just commenting upon the race as a whole.” His hands were warm to touch, rough with a bowman’s calluses and a lockpicker’s scars.

She watched the path of his hands, as his fingers slid over the edge of her greave, wandering higher to find the bare skin between it and her poleyn, under the straps. Despite her careful attention, she did not see the motion that undid the buckles, only the result. The greave fell to the dirt floor with a clatter muffled by the sounds of the storm.

When she lifted her gaze, she found him there; she had leaned forward and he had moved close. They were thigh to thigh, his hand deft on the poleyn protecting her knee. Clever fingers made short work of the armor, helping her shed the thick skin Kirkwall demanded. Every brush of his fingertips against her skin was concussive, running straight to the core of her.

“And you?” she asked, voice soft. “What would you say about your skills?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured. His breath warmed her; she tasted him when she licked her lips. He focused on the quick movement, gaze locked upon her lips. “Every great writer knows it’s better to show than tell.”

She tasted whiskey sweet; Hawke’s legend may have made her war incarnate, but she kissed like a woman in need. It barely took any coaxing at all to draw her closer, out of her chair and onto his. She shifted, bare shin knocking against the arm of his chair, unable to spare the attention needed to arrange herself so they could share the seat. 

She had long suspected his mouth of inspiring scandalized warnings about chastity lost, but never thought he’d tempt so without uttering a word.

He wrapped his hands around her thighs, just above the knee, and lifted her. The muscles of his shoulders and arms flexed under her hands. He shifted her so her legs fell comfortably astride his hips, bent up under her but no longer preventing her from settling flush against the hard length of his cock. She thrust her fingers into his hair and tilted his head up, feeling the strands come loose. When she lifted her head to catch her breath, he growled his protest and chased her mouth. 

It was the whiskey, maybe, or too much time spent without the excuse of it. Her hands worked the buckles of her cuirass and pauldrons while his ignored the armor completely, stealing past leather and metal to find moist heat at the heart of her. Her hands fumbled as he ran a fingertip along her slit, watching with heated amusement when she left off completely, buckles half-undone, back arched and hips rolling into his touch.

Maybe another night, he would have indulged himself more, maybe it would have gone differently if the set up hadn’t been such that it put her pleasure foremost in his mind, or maybe it would have been exactly the same; Varric found himself unconcerned with the structure that led him to this moment. Hawke sprawled across his lap, his hand thrust down her pants and fingers teasing her lips. It was a beautiful sight, one that made it easy to ignore the distraction of his own arousal. He propped his chin on his free hand, resting against the arm of the chair and watched through heavily lidded eyes as she rocked her hips, searching for a harder touch, a more satisfying pressure.

He waited until she lifted her head to look at him, hunger plain on a countenance usually guarded. He waited until he heard the thread of need in her gasp, until she parted her lips to beg more from him, and gave it to her in one swift stoke, spearing her on his finger and pressing hard upon her clit with his thumb.

He couldn’t stand to see her beg, not even for this.

Hawke fell forward against him, gasping against the rough edge of his jaw, pleasure burning away thought beyond him and her climax. She pressed against his chest, fingers curled in his hair, anchored against his neck.  

He slid his other hand over her back, pulled her cuirass from between them. Her tunic was a simple thing to push aside, his chest mostly bared to her skin. She shifted, rubbed her breasts against the rough hair and hard muscle of his chest. His sigh was one of contented masculine pleasure.

He turned his head and pressed his mouth hot against her ear. “Now, if I were truly feeling eloquent…”


End file.
